Top 25 Achievements
1. We brought Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Director of the UN Millennium Project, and President and Co-founder of Millennium Promise, to speak at a packed Memorial Hall, seating over 1500, about poverty, the Millennium Village Project, and how our effort was setting a precedent and example for schools around the country.
2. We received the financial support of the UNC Parents’ Council for an Academic Forum featuring Joel Negin, Millennium Village Project HIV/AIDs coordinator and Senior Project Advisor to the Access Project at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, at the UNC Campus Y. Mr. Negin gave students a firsthand account of how the Millennium Village Project works on the ground and answered tough questions about development, facilitating a critical look at the model.
3. We have secured the support of President Johnnetta Cole of Bennett College and President Erskine Bowles of UNC in our endeavor.
4. We have established a Faculty Advisory Committee to help guarantee continuity of our programs after the current founding members graduate; our FAC includes experts in African studies, social work, environmental science, and business, as well as an administrative member.
5. The Phi Delta Theta Fraternity has mobilized its members and alumni to fundraise for the Millennium Village Project, creating an unprecedented alliance between the Greek and humanitarian communities based on our common interests in humanity.
6. We hosted Jock Brandis, founder of the Full Belly Project, a remarkable initiative to introduce easy-to-make, innovative hand- or pedal-powered peanut-shelling machines to the developing world. These machines will help the 500 million people relying on peanuts shell their peanuts 40-100 times faster than they do currently, giving poor farmers around the world time to invest in their families and communities. We introduced Jeffrey Sachs to Mr. Brandis and his technology.
7. The North Carolina Hillel held a Shabat dinner featuring Millennium Village Project, also making a generous donation to help fund initiation costs for the Millennium Village Project at UNC and Duke.
8. With Episcopal Campus Ministries and OASIS (the African Culture group at UNC), we held a ‘Poverty Dinner,’ including testimonies by students from Africa on their experiences in their native countries.
9. We joined Millennium Promise co-founder Jeff Flug at the Wealth and Giving Forum in July, where we presented our project and partnership to the forum’s participants.
10. We have collected letters of support from over sixty student groups in support of anti-poverty efforts behind the Millennium Village Project; these groups have included religious groups such as Episcopal Campus Ministries, cultural groups such as the Black Student Movement, Greek organizations such as Kappa Psi and Kappa Delta, activist groups such as Students United for Darfur Awareness Now, and so on.
11. The Frank Porter Graham Honors Society is giving all money generated for charity this year to our MVP.
12. We held a “Speak out against Poverty” Rally with Professor Jeffrey Sachs and representatives of a dozen student groups, demonstrating our solidarity against poverty to the UNC community.
13. MVP in the classroom: three classes—a class on fundraising, an APPLES class on coalition building in the non-profit sector, and a public relations class—have focused on projects involving the Millennium Village Project.
14. Advocates for Human Rights and Nourish International have put on discussions to help students explore development and the ideas behind the MVP model. NI has also held a “hunger lunch” for MVP, giving us 100% of proceeds.
15. We have been featured in over a dozen publications, including Blue and White, The Daily Tarheel, and a special report from Patchwork magazine.
16. We held a press rally at Bennett College, informing the Greensboro community of our unprecedented partnership and goal to partner with a Millennium Village.
17. We have begun working with Columbia University’s Earth Institute to create an internship in the Millennium Villages for students from UNC, Duke, and Bennett.
18. The service fraternity Delta Sigma Iota put on a garba, a traditional Indian social dance, to generate funds for Millennium Village Project.
19. Intervarsity Christian Fellowship held an international AIDS awareness event, taking donations for Millennium Village Project.
20. Having secured tickets to the UNC/Duke basketball games at both UNC and Duke, we raffled off the tickets, informing participants about MVP and international extreme poverty.
21. We have begun giving school presentations to high schools on extreme poverty, earning up to $20 an hour per person from the Center for Global Initiatives.
22. We have launched a letter writing campaign at Duke University, involving our families in our fundraising initiatives.
23. We have held a concert at Duke University’s Page Auditorium involving a capella groups from both UNC and Duke to generate funds and raise awareness for MVP.
24. The fraternity Chi Psi put on a chili cook-off to raise money for the Millennium Village Project.
25. We have sold thousands of t-shirts and our name is everywhere at UNC, Duke, and Bennett College—we have started a three-university cooperative movement to help end extreme poverty!
Download this list of Top 25 Achievements [PDF document].
